course, fermentation is a kind of rot, much as life, from the standpoint of energy, is a form of decay. There was, though, a beauty, a certain soap-bubble shimmer of benignity, in feeling the first sips mingle with my blood and speed up its motion through my veins while my gaze was fixed on Esther’s pursed, aggrieved little lips, tensed to unleash the next argumentative utterance. She spoke of my upper lip but it was hers that was complex; across her mouth there passed that wistful cloud, that sad sweet blur, a scarcely perceptible “hurt” look, a hint of some sudden tender sad song about to form a round O . She used to blow me a certain amount; indeed, when we were new to each other and the passion of courtship was upon her, the female passion of beating out another woman and securing a protector, I could hardly keep her lips away from my fly. In cars, while I was driving: her fluffy head would bump the wheel and make steering tricky. In my church office, as I sat back in the fake-leather easy chair my counsellees usually occupied in their spiritual confusion: my eyeballs would roll upward in themanner of Saint Teresa (who used, incidentally, to yearn at communion for a bigger host —más, más, Dios! ). In bed, when we were spent: Esther would rest her lovely little sugar sack of a skull on my belly and hold me softly in her mouth as if for safekeeping, and in my sleep I would harden again. Now it was a rare thing, and she never failed to let me feel her disgust. I could not in good faith blame her: our emotions change, and the chemistry of our impulses with them.
“Why don’t you bring him around?” she asked, as if innocently, her eyes also, it occurred to me, like my recent visitor’s, awash with window light, though their blue favored the green end of the spectrum and my young visitor’s the gray. My own eyes, to complete the chart, are a somewhat melting chocolate, a dark wet bearish brown that makes me look, according to the susceptibilities of the witness, angry or about to cry. Esther sarcastically added, “I haven’t been around a brainstorm for years.”
Underneath our sour exchange, Richie vented his exasperation. “All this dumb book does,” he said, “is talk about sets and keep showing these like puddles of x ’s that don’t have anything to do with numbers!”
With a sudden graceful acquiescence Esther bent low, as minutes before she had bent her face to the hot stove coil, and read the textbook over his shoulder. “When we write twenty-seven,” she told him, “it’s a shorthand way of expressing two sets of ten plus seven ones. To do it into base six, you must ask yourself how many sixes go into twenty-seven. Think. Begins with F.”
“Five?” the poor child said, his brain frazzled.
“Four.” Her voice barely disguised her disgust. She pointed into his book with a disagreeable scrape of her fingernail. “Four times six is twenty-four. With three left over makes forty-three. See?”
See . “Gilligan’s Island” had momentarily yielded to a commercial. For catfood. A handsome, caramel-colored cat, an actor-cat wearing a bow tie, was shown snubbing raw steak and fresh fish and then greedily burying its face up to its throat muff in a dish of gray-brown pellets. Pavarotti in the distance was reaching toward one of the higher shelves of canned emotion. The ceiling above our heads, in our old-fashioned, servant-oriented kitchen, showed cracks and a worrisome yellowness, as if pipes under the second floor were slowly leaking ectoplasm. Through our big kitchen “picture” window—an improvement inflicted in the Fifties—I could see across our yard and fence into the dining room of our neighbors, the Kriegmans. Myron teaches bacteriology at the medical school and Sue writes children’s books, and their three teen-age daughters are lovely in triplicate. Their five heads were arrayed in the light of the Tiffany lamp over their dining table and I could even see Myron’s mouth
“Why don’t you bring him around?” she asked, as if innocently, her eyes also, it occurred to me, like my recent visitor’s, awash with window light, though their blue favored the green end of the spectrum and my young visitor’s the gray. My own eyes, to complete the chart, are a somewhat melting chocolate, a dark wet bearish brown that makes me look, according to the susceptibilities of the witness, angry or about to cry. Esther sarcastically added, “I haven’t been around a brainstorm for years.”
Underneath our sour exchange, Richie vented his exasperation. “All this dumb book does,” he said, “is talk about sets and keep showing these like puddles of x ’s that don’t have anything to do with numbers!”
With a sudden graceful acquiescence Esther bent low, as minutes before she had bent her face to the hot stove coil, and read the textbook over his shoulder. “When we write twenty-seven,” she told him, “it’s a shorthand way of expressing two sets of ten plus seven ones. To do it into base six, you must ask yourself how many sixes go into twenty-seven. Think. Begins with F.”
“Five?” the poor child said, his brain frazzled.
“Four.” Her voice barely disguised her disgust. She pointed into his book with a disagreeable scrape of her fingernail. “Four times six is twenty-four. With three left over makes forty-three. See?”
See . “Gilligan’s Island” had momentarily yielded to a commercial. For catfood. A handsome, caramel-colored cat, an actor-cat wearing a bow tie, was shown snubbing raw steak and fresh fish and then greedily burying its face up to its throat muff in a dish of gray-brown pellets. Pavarotti in the distance was reaching toward one of the higher shelves of canned emotion. The ceiling above our heads, in our old-fashioned, servant-oriented kitchen, showed cracks and a worrisome yellowness, as if pipes under the second floor were slowly leaking ectoplasm. Through our big kitchen “picture” window—an improvement inflicted in the Fifties—I could see across our yard and fence into the dining room of our neighbors, the Kriegmans. Myron teaches bacteriology at the medical school and Sue writes children’s books, and their three teen-age daughters are lovely in triplicate. Their five heads were arrayed in the light of the Tiffany lamp over their dining table and I could even see Myron’s mouth
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